Review:
Hired Guns: Jagged Edge Review

This spiritual sequel to the Jagged Alliance series does little to bring turn-based tactical gaming out of the nineties.

It’s becoming increasingly odd how people mourn the loss of point ‘n’ click adventure gaming when it’s still alive and kicking. With regular quality output from Telltale Games and other releases such as the Broken Sword Directors Cut and Still Life 2, there’s more than enough to keep fans of that particular genre pointing and clicking away blissfully. The turn-based tactical game, however, a deliberate approach to strategy found in titles such as X-COM, Silent Storm and Jagged Alliance is indeed as dead as the proverbial big bird. What’s more upsetting is that, bar a few nostalgic souls, nobody seems to care.

Thankfully, Russian-Ukrainian developer Game Factory Interactive still does care. Though GFI might have lost the intellectual rights to the series after its Jagged Alliance 3D and Jagged Alliance 3 projects collapsed, Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge is a sequel in all but name – though even the title is pretty similar. While this has obviously left the game open to keen-eyed scrutiny from the Jagged Alliance fanbase, there’s a fair bit to admire about this spiritual successor. But even though Hired Guns manages to nail the squad management, realistic combat and slow-paced strategy of Jagged Alliance there’s enough core gameplay faults that might make you wish that this style of game remained in the past.
Hired Guns throws you into familiar territory, as you command a group of mercenaries through the African country to help a deposed Diamond Shore sovereign reclaim his authority from well-armed rebels. The plot is told via emails and conversations with locals; whether you feel required to read them is entirely up to you, but one nice touch is the way in which you can often spend your way out of trouble or circumvent confrontations altogether by being tactful with the locals. The mangled translation work, including such gems as “Interesting, how many bullets get into?” and “Is it hurt?” provides all sorts of hilarity… or may reduce you to tears, depending on how seriously you take your gaming.